


sometimes a soldier heals the doctor

by AnnCherie



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Bisexual Kyle Valenti, M/M, POV Kyle Valenti, kyle valenti is in love with alex manes and you can fight me on that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-25 03:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19737301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnCherie/pseuds/AnnCherie
Summary: "A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist: he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must," as W.H. Auden wrote, "love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own."Alex Manes makes Kyle Valenti a better doctor





	1. Chapter 1

Kyle Valenti was a good doctor. 

Gone were the days of boyish arrogance, impatience, bias… they'd given way to wisdom and impeccable bedside manner. What once were fists used by a teenage asshole jock were now hands used for comforting sick children. The observation he had used at seventeen to play into insecurities of anyone around him now went into noticing any variation in breathing that might give way to diagnosis. The list went on, reaffirmed by his patients, supervisors, and medical board exam scores.

He was a damn good doctor. 

But the moment that Alex Manes came back from war and their eyes caught, Kyle couldn't remember if he was a good person.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"I don't know why I was like that," he lies, feeling too cowardly for an apology. An apology wouldn't be enough. An apology would require explanations he wasn't ready to give, and an assumption that he could wave a wand and fix the past. 

Alex calls him out about the exact reasons, but leaves Kyle inwardly gasping for relief when he doesn't go further. 

"You didn't want anyone to think you were gay."

_ I didn't want anyone to know I had a crush on you _ , he admits to himself as the conversation goes on.  _ The rest, they were only half right _ . 

That's where the truth stops, though, settling in his mind. Kyle doesn't deserve the right to confess romantic feelings and he knows that. He is _painfully_ aware. 

But he can say things that mean the same, in his own way. "You're not a coward. You're the bravest person I know."

Kyle Valenti was a brave doctor. He was not a brave person. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Alex had more or less stood up for him in front of Guerin, and for not the first time Kyle wondered why. It was one thing to forgive him in private, faced with their intertwined family history, but another for Alex to tell his boyfriend to forget about the past. Well, possibly boyfriend. It was hard to tell with those two. 

What wasn't hard to tell was the jealousy laced in Guerin's angry question at the 7A door in Caulfield. "Alex and  _ you,  _ huh?"

Knowing he shouldn't take secret joy in staring Guerin down with silence doesn't help. There was absolutely nothing the angry cowboy had to worry about, Alex never would look twice at Kyle with him around, but Kyle still felt nonsensical pride swell up inside his chest. Guerin was jealous. Guerin thought he was a threat. Guerin had noticed that Alex was over high school too. 

Kyle Valenti was a hopeful doctor, the kind that refused to believe his patients would die under his hand. Kyle thought he might become a hopeful person soon too. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


"You put my father in coma, I see." Alex said, catching Kyle off guard on the way to his truck post twelve hour shift. The parking lot was now dark and the desert night was settling into it's chill. Overhead lights illuminated them and even though they were alone, Kyle still feels desperately nervous.

"Look, Alex-," 

"Valenti," Alex said firmly, looking at him with his intense eyes and a smile that cut off Kyle's anxiety. "I'm only mad you didn't film it."

With a laugh, Kyle shook his head. "Yeah, kind of hard to hold a camera when you get shot for the first time."

"You handled yourself well," Alex said, then explained further once Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I put several cameras up after taking over in case something like this happened."

"Of course you did."

Alex smiled in response, before looking serious again. "I'm glad you're okay. It's bad enough what my father did to yours, if he killed you too--,"

"Don't worry about it," Kyle replied. "You're not responsible for his actions, okay?" 

With a nod, Alex glanced away. "As a soldier I was trained to kill for the greater good, you know? And I let myself play into that because I wanted to be the strongest man in the room. But you? You trained for years to be a doctor and learned the opposite. Now you're stronger than me in different ways."

"No, I'm not."

"I would have shot him. Knowing what he's done, what he's willing to do-- if he had shot me, I would have shot him. Maybe I'm just as bad as he is."

“If you were just as bad as he was, you wouldn’t be worried about being as bad as he was.” Kyle responded, his hand finding Alex’s arm. It’s a reflex after years of trying to comfort patients. A hand to squeeze an arm, gently but reassuring. Alex blinks at him, looking unsure of the contact, and Kyle awkwardly pulls back.

As a doctor, he knows when and how to comfort. As someone standing in front of a broken glass masterpiece, he doesn’t know how to explain the beauty showing on the outside.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


_ "Fuck him _ ." Kyle half shouted, spotting Maria Deluca kissing Michael Guerin in the back hallway of the Wild Pony leading toward the kitchen. Alex had stiffened beside him but simply tightened his jaw and turned back around the entrance door they had planned on going through. "Leave it, Valenti."

"No!" Kyle argued angrily. "He lies to you about being an alien and you save his ass over and over without a shred of evidence or explanation and then he hooks up with your best friend?" 

"Keep your voice down," Alex hissed at him in response to the "alien" buzzword. "Him and I-- we never got our timing down. Time to move on."

"I'm going to kick his ass." Kyle stated. 

Alex only looked out at him from the corner of his eye, already walking through the door. It’s a bad day, one of the ones that require his crutch. "His brother just died bringing your sister back to life."

"So he'll have a reason to fight me too," Kyle shrugged, still annoyed but a little cowed as he followed. "Sure you don't want to go back? Make out to piss him off?" 

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he regrets them, even as Alex gives a sputtering laugh of surprise. "Yeah, Valenti? And they say chivalry isn't dead."

Kyle doesn't blush easy but he can feel his ears heat up as he controls his expression. 

"Hey, after being a homophobic dick I owe you one or two," he awkwardly pretended, hoping that it would play itself off as nothing serious. Well, half hoped. 

"Ah, next you're going to tell me that you only bullied me because you were gay too," Alex teased, but this time Kyle wasn't quite able to make his laugh convincing. For a moment, he wasn't sure that Alex would call him out. There was a pause, after all, but in the end the curious hacker couldn't help but give in. "Or are you?"

"I'm, uh, I’m not  _ gay _ ," he said weakly, looking up at the sky. Leave it to Guerin fucking up for him to out himself on accident. 

"But you're not straight." Alex said confidently, even though he was still staring. "Well, Liz owes me $20."

Kyle rolled his eyes, discomfort hitting him in a way that tightened every part of his body-- throat, chest, stomach-- and before he could stop himself he was walking off. 

"Valenti!" Alex called after him, sounding apologetic as he followed. Nothing so easy was going to stop him until he heard a softer, “Kyle!”

Rounding on Alex with the angry feelings and insecurities he thought he had buried a decade ago, he waited, forcing himself to hold back.

“Look, I didn’t-- I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry,” Alex said, appearing at a loss. 

“It’s fine,” Kyle replied shortly. “I’ve said worse.”

“When we were kids and you were uneducated. I don’t have either of those excuses.” There’s something actually empathetic in Alex’s eyes that Kyle really can’t stand. Not because it’s pity but because it’s something else that catapults him into a vulnerability he hasn’t felt in a very long time. “Does anyone else know?”

“No one I care about.”

“I’m sorry. I would have thought given how everything has changed for you that you’d be out and just as confident about it as everything else.” Alex said, grasping. “Guess I forgot what president we live under.”

“Me being out or not has nothing to do with that asshole,” Kyle replied. “It’s more--,”

“Roswell?” 

“Yeah,” he replied with a huff.

Lightening the mood, perhaps because they weren’t at the right place for this deep of a conversation to go further while sober, Alex tries to lighten the mood. “So you really would have made out with me to piss off Guerin? In public despite not being out?”

“We’ll never know,” Kyle said, giving him a lighthearted glare.

Kyle was a selfless doctor. Alex Manes was turning him into a selfless person too.

* * *

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

"You and Alex seem close again," Liz told Kyle as they sat in his father's old cabin turned Alex’s home. 

Rosa had gone to sleep downstairs, still unable to resurface until they found a better cover story than the debated "long lost twin" excuse, and both Liz and Kyle hadn't managed to leave after visiting her just yet. Liz looked worse for wear, more exhausted than he'd ever seen her between her three obsessions-- Rosa, her father, and working tirelessly to bring Max back to life. Still, she had a small smile on her face as she leaned against the couch and watched him. "It's good. Reminds me of when we were kids."

Kyle gave a guarded smile in return, making a deflection. "Amazing what happens when high school jocks grow up."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Don't do that. I'm serious. I'm really glad he has someone other than Rosa and I what with everything going on."

"You mean Maria betraying him for his ex?" Kyle said moodily, knowing better than to show his full anger for Liz's best friend in front of her.

Liz pursed her lips. "You can't control who you fall for, Kyle."

He didn't have a reply that wouldn't be dripping in hypocrisy, so he just huffed and looked away. 

"He told me how you two worked together recently." She added, and he felt wary that she was digging for information now, even if she seemed too tired and temporarily comfortable on the couch.

Finally, because it was Liz and she was the only one he had trusted in Roswell consistently throughout the years, he gave her tiny leeway. “Honestly I don’t know how he forgave me. I wouldn’t have forgiven me.”

“You’ve both been through so much,” she said, her brown eyes looking kind. “You lost your father and became a doctor and he went to war and lost a leg. That’s more sickness and death than most people have ever seen. It makes sense that you’d relate to each other now.”

“I guess.” Kyle sighed, starting to sink into the couch as well. Not unlike Liz, he was also needing a break between his long hospital shifts, visiting Rosa, and then helping Liz in the lab whenever Guerin wasn’t around. “Still seems generous. Makes me--,”

He trailed off, only barely catching himself before he revealed more emotion than he wanted, but Liz gave him a curious look. “Makes you what? You don’t look like you’re talking about guilt.”

Dryly, he reaffirmed, “Oh, I feel guilty.”

“I know.” She said, serious and intense. “I always knew you would one day. That’s not  _ just _ it though. Right?”

_ Right _ , is the answer his mind screams, even if he’s unsure he can give it with or without her generous out. The silence he gave lapsed from thoughtful to guarded and she put a hand on his, squeezing tight. Liz was a firestorm of contradictions, both direct and abrasive at times, but also generous and sympathetic the next. 

"Guilt drowns out everything else," he told her, making sure to signal the conversation as over by standing up. It's time to leave for bed now. 

A good doctor knew which parts of truth to tell and when to best relieve family members. Kyle hadn't grasped timing on truths outside of a lab coat.

  
  


******

  
  


“How’s life, Valenti?” Guerin asked, with the tiniest hint of a slur and the mixed smell of alcohol and acetone on his breath. Kyle would never get over the oddness of nail polish remover being alien morphine, or the fact that Michael was probably addicted to the "drug" as well as alcohol. “Spend enough time following Alex around like a puppy?”

Kyle had expected this sooner or later, that Guerin would one day seek him out at Saturn’s Ring instead of staying at his girlfriend's bar. He had avoided bars altogether for a good month because of it. 

It would be so soothing to punch the perpetually angry alien in the face, at least for the few seconds before he was hit back, but Kyle had caused enough damage in the past. Tightening his jaw to the point that his teeth are grinding, he pulled his wallet out, slapped bills on the bar, and began to walk away until Guerin held him back by the arm.

“What, you’re a doctor now and all of the sudden you’re reformed?” Michael taunted. “As if everyone is supposed to just up and pretend you’re not just as much of an asshole as I am?”

“Funny, I don't recall sleeping with my ex's best friend." Kyle snapped. Unable to stop the temptation, he added a pointed jibe. "I'll let you know if it happens. Liz being my ex and Alex-- well, you know."

He's not sure who's more surprised he didn't get punched for the implication, him or Michael, but the flicker of guilt and self loathing wrapped around hurt that crossed Michael's face seemed to win against violence. 

“So you're just there to pick up the pieces, is that it? Life coming full circle.”

Kyle glared, stepping forward after angrily pulling his arm back. Antagonizing an alien with a temper wasn't wise, sure, but he'd done all sorts of stupid things since coming back to Roswell. “You must think a lot of yourself to think you or anyone else could bring Alex Manes to pieces.”

Michael shook his head, looking away. "You hurt him, Valenti, and I will make Caulfield look like a vacation for you."

"I'm not capable of hurting him," Kyle responded with a huff. "Have a nice night."

He wasn't sure if Guerin would interpret his statement correctly. It didn't really matter.

As a doctor he couldn't harm Alex under any code, sure, but Kyle didn't matter enough to Alex for him to have an effect. Not since they were children. 

  
  


\------------------------------------------

  
  
  


While Kyle had hoped he’d be lucky enough that the sleepy desert town had something better to do then spread his business, the next time Alex saw him in the bunker proved that wrong. Alex came up to him at their table full of classified old scientific journals and printed records, looking both curious and guarded. “So I heard you and Guerin had words.”

“From who?” he asked, in case it was one of their friends and he could berate them for causing him drama.

If it was, Alex wouldn’t give it up. “You know the town talks.”

Kyle inwardly groaned and tried to deflect as he physically turned back to the research in front of them. “It was just words.”

He could see Alex nod from the corner of his eye. “I was surprised. Going to tell me what it was about?”

“Nothing important.”

“Seems like it might have been important.” Alex pressed. Kyle shrugged, not wanting to get into a talk about Alex’s ex before it was even noon. “Kyle.”

He pursed his lips, annoyed that the first name card was pulled. “I think he's just jealous.”

“He doesn't get to be jealous.” Alex snapped.

Pausing, Kyle turned to face Alex again. There wasn’t any confusion on why Guerin would be jealous, which he had almost expected. Why be jealous of something non-existent? Further, he hadn’t even rolled his eyes or huffed in disgust at the idea of his ex thinking something was there. Carefully, he said. “Yeah, I hinted at that.”

“Hinted?” Alex asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Hinted.” Kyle said, even if the sheepishness found its way to his face.

Alex chuckled a little, the corners of his mouth quirking a tiny bit through his outburst of anger. “Maybe you have grown up.”

Kyle laughed a little, only because he could see that Alex was teasing, voice smaller as he said, “Maybe.” He can’t help but tense up though, finally not too cowardly to begin an apology. “Look, Alex--,”

“I don't care about words.” Alex interrupted, shaking his head. “You've apologized with your actions, that's what matters to me.”

Kyle awkwardly nodded.

“Want to go the bar?” Alex asked, catching Kyle off guard with the 180 in mood. The smile he’s receiving is mischievous and he can only guess exactly  _ which _ bar Alex wanted to go to in that sort of mood. Confirmed when he added, “I believe you said you owe me a fake make out session.”

Surprise doesn’t stop his ingrained inability not to flirt back. “Oh, I don't fake anything.”

“Yeah, Valenti?” Alex asked, somewhere between amused and pleased.

“Bring it, Manes.” Kyle responded, and then they were kissing without the pretense of a bar setting and Kyle could barely breathe in relief between the finality of Alex’s lips.

Kyle Valenti was a good doctor. Alex Manes was a better healer.

  
  
  



End file.
